


Trapped in Fear

by EchoShimmer



Series: Wumptober 2020 [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Buried Alive, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Tim Drake, Hurt/Comfort, Sad Tim Drake, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Tim Drake-centric, wumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoShimmer/pseuds/EchoShimmer
Summary: Red Robin's run in with Scarecrow ends badly, and everyone else scrambles to help him.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Everyone
Series: Wumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948924
Comments: 16
Kudos: 386





	Trapped in Fear

**Author's Note:**

> This one was written at the request of [Marundy_Robot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marudny_Robot)! Thanks for the prompt, I hope you like it :)

Tim wakes up abruptly, heart racing and body crying out in pain. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. His attack response kicked in instantly, muscles clenching to block the blows he could sense coming, moving to throw himself up from wherever he was laying before his eyes had fully opened.

Instead of finding enemies, Tim’s arms, knees, and head hit a hard surface, and his eyes found nothing but darkness. Tim hissed into the empty space, slowly pulling his arms up along his chest so that he could rub at his smarting elbows and forehead before carefully analyzing his surroundings.

He was in some sort of box, that much was instantly clear. He had just enough space above him to pull his arms over his chest so that he could press against the top, but not enough to fully bend his knees. His shoulders, hands, head, and feet each had a couple inches of clearance to the sides around him. There wasn’t enough space to flip over. That was… not ideal, but Tim wasn’t claustrophobic. He would be fine. There was really no reason for him to feel so panicked right now.

Tim ran his hands along the top of the box and was surprised to find rough plywood planks under his fingertips, tightly pressed together. Normally anyone who was trying to trap a vigilante (and he  _ was _ a vigilante at the moment, the uncomfortable press of his armor against the hard surface beneath him confirmed it) would trap them in something a bit harder to break out of, or at least tie them up. The box wasn’t small enough that they would expect him to be constrained just by that. 

The entire thing screamed of a rushed, ill-planned minor villain plot. Tim was kind of embarrassed that he had been caught by whoever this was if they were going to be this sloppy about holding him. He scowled at the thought of what his siblings would say if they knew about this, and pressed up against one of the wood panels with increasing strength.

Only to freeze in surprise when loose dirt cascaded down onto his face and chest. Enough that Tim had to clench his mouth closed and shake his head back and forth to get the particles off of his domino lenses. A surprising amount of dirt considering that there should be none.

But if there was dirt above him, that would mean-

...

Okay, maybe he could panic a little bit now. 

It was probably time to call in backup. Tim carefully pulled an arm up, now extremely cautious of bumping the edges of his structurally unsound box too strongly lest it rain more dirt down on him, and he flicked on his Comm, consciously working to keep his breathing slow and controlled despite that his heart was trying to beat out of his chest.

“Red Robin here. Is anyone else online?”

“Red!” Nightwing responded quickly. “You haven’t checked in for almost an hour and a half, we were starting to get worried something had happened. Another fifteen minutes and we were going to send Black Bat to go check in on you.

Tim remembered then, about the Arkham breakout that had occurred that afternoon and summoned all of the Bats back to Gotham from their scattered posts to track down Ivy, Riddler, and Scarecrow. They had split up into pairs initially, but when Nightwing and Spoiler had managed to track down a very upset Ivy Black Bat had decided to go back them up, leaving Red to check out a possibly Scarecrow sighting on his own.

That was all Tim could remember before he woke up here. Had he found Scarecrow, then? He could see how this sort of thing might be Crane’s style.

“Uh, about that,” Tim transitioned, the stress starting to leak into his voice despite him trying to stay calm. The slip was, of course, caught immediately.

“Red?” Batman cut in quickly. “What’s going on? Did you find Scarecrow?” Blunt, straight to the point. All indicators of an already stressed Batman. He always got like this when a big breakout happened. It made Tim nervous to have to admit to his situation, to admit that he messed up, but it's not like he had any options.

“I’m not, uh, entirely sure? I can’t exactly remember anything since BB and I split up.”

There was a somewhat tense pause over the line, and then, “What happened? Where are you right now, Red?”

“I…” Tim’s control slipped a step further. “I’m not really sure about that, either. I just woke up in some sort of box, and I went to push my way out, but there was  _ dirt _ and I- I think I’m underground somewhere, B. I can’t-”

“So you got caught,” Batman’s voice is hard. “You were given a simple task to gather information and wait for backup before engaging, and you failed to do so.” Tim’s heart sank, dread building. 

Bruce was… mad? Disappointed? What else should Tim have expected, though, when he had messed up so badly. They were all so busy already, and now they were going to have to come rescue him instead of looking for the escaped Arkhamites.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said quickly, almost tearing up now as the panic rose. “I know I messed up.”

“I told you he shouldn’t have been left alone, B,” Nightwing said, tone somewhere between disappointment and knowing. “You know how he is.”

“I can’t believe you guys replaced me with him,” Hood sounded disgusted, and wow Tim had thought that they were getting along better lately but apparently the older man had been humoring him.

“Why do you think he was replaced so quickly?” Robin reminded them with an edge of amusement. “Without Batman there to keep an eye on him he’s practically useless. Nightwing needed a better partner to watch his back in Father’s absence.”

“I didn’t expect him to hang around like this though, or I would have been more straightforward about my intentions when I fired him,” Nightwing added dryly.

Tim’s entire body was on fire, he was burning. Salty tears burned tracks down his cheeks, self loathing blocking his airways and making his breathing erratic. He had thought things were getting better again, after so long working in isolation after B’s disappearance. Hadn’t Tim saving him proved that he was capable of working solo? Did the family really see him as such a liability? How could Tim have messed up so badly that they all thought he was totally useless? 

“I’m sorry, I know I messed up. I promise I’ll do better, I swear. Don’t leave me here.”

“You only have yourself to blame,” Nightwing scolded. “We’ve tried to help you for years now, but you make it so difficult. This is the last straw. There’s no time to spare for one of us to go and rescue you after every little mistake. You either get yourself out alone, or you don’t get out at all.”

“No. No no no, you can’t,” Tim cried harder. His head was pounding, chest squeezing impossibly tight. He couldn’t breathe anymore. Was all of his air gone already, or was it just the panic? Tim continued to beg around his panting breaths and the others’ occasional jabs at his patheticness, but it was becoming increasingly harder for him to focus on anything next more. 

The last words Tim heard before he finally passed out, though, were perfectly clear. The words he had always feared.

“I should have never made you Robin.”

\---

“Red? Red Robin, say something!” Nightwing called somewhat hysterically over the open Comm line as Batman tried desperately to ping his second youngest’s location. “B, he’s not responding anymore.”

“I think he passed out,” Hood said tersely. “Probably a good thing, if he kept panicking like that he’d have gone through his air supply faster.” He dropped down onto the roof where Batman and Robin had paused in the face of this new emergency, Hood’s body language clearly displaying how stressed he was despite keeping his voice relatively even. 

With Hood’s history with… waking up buried alive… Bruce was all of five seconds away from sending his second eldest back to the cave for the night. But being banned from helping wouldn’t calm his son’s nerves, and Jason was unlikely to listen to the order in any case, so Bruce kept silent.

“He seemed more hysterical then would be expected for him,” Robin pointed out from Batman’s other side. “He wasn’t responding directly to questioning, and he seemed overly panicked the whole time despite our attempts to keep him calm. Considering Crane is our prime suspect here, do you think it’s possible...”

“That he’s been dosed with fear toxin on top of being buried? I suspect that might be the case as well.” Bruce’s jaw clenched a hair tighter. “In which case that puts us on a whole different timer. Depending on which toxin Crane used, it could very well kill him without the antidote.”

Silence followed the statement, the entire group terrified of the implications. They needed to get to Red quickly. As if responding to Batman’s silent pleas, the computer finally dinged with Red’s tracker signal, Oracle having managed to access it remotely to turn it back on. 

“We’ve got a location,” Batman said shortly, forwarding the data to the others’ GPS systems before taking off himself, Robin and Hood close behind him. The trio went straight towards the nearby Batmobile and tore across the city.

The Batmobile skidded to a hasty stop in front of the warehouse at practically the same time that Nightwing, Spoiler, and Black Bat, arrived from the opposite direction. The former two were sporting minor injuries from their fight with Ivy, but nothing bad enough that Batman could justify trying to send them home when everyone was so anxious to help.

Instead, the veritable mob of Bats all converged on the Batmobile’s trunk to retrieve the tactical shovels that were stored there (thank god once again for Bruce’s need to be prepared for everything). Bruce eyed each of his kids for any indication that they would be better off staying with the car, but they all just oozed determination. So they all continued.

They all moved on foot to follow the tracker’s signal around the back to the open dirt lot that sat there. The dirt around the center was noticeably disturbed with footprints and tire tracks surrounding a roughly human sized slightly darker rectangle. Batman ground his teeth and gave the order to dig, praying that Red wasn’t buried too deep. They were on a clock here, and Red still wasn’t responding.

Small mercies, the work went fast with six able bodied and very determined vigilante’s working together, and they’re shovels hit wood around three and a half feet down. It was only another minute or two before around a third of the wood was revealed, and Batman impatiently reached down to rip the poorly constructed box open, revealing a Red that was even more pale than usual.

Concerned that Tim had apparently been unconscious for half an hour at this point, Batman stripped of his gloves without care to press one hand against Tim’s pulse point even as the other moved to brush back his son’s too-long hair. His other children all hovered anxiously above them.

Tim’s skin was clammy, obviously unwell, and his entire body was taunt as if pained, but the slightly erratic pulse eased Bruce’s mounting concern ever so slightly. They weren’t too late. Extremely carefully, aware of any possible injuries, Bruce picked up his second youngest and passed him gently up to his siblings before climbing out himself.

Nightwing was already administering the general purpose Fear antidote by the time Batman was standing again, everyone else huddled around the small boy where he had been temporarily laid. They all stepped back without prompting when Batman walked up, knowing well how he was when one of his kids was hurt. Hood snuck in one last hair ruffle, shoulder’s trembling ever so slightly, before he helped carefully boost Tim into their father’s arms.

Bruce paused for just a moment, reveling in the small, warm,  _ alive _ child in his arms. They weren’t entirely out of the woods yet, though. So Batman forced back his emotions for one last time and gave the order, looking up to scan the crowd of slightly-dirty vigilante’s as he did so.

“Alright, everyone back to the Cave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tomorrow is the first day I've decided to skip, so I'll see you all on Oct 6th :)


End file.
